Half Moon Hill: A Destiny Novel Read online

  “I do have one more.”

  Shit. Couldn’t she take a hint? When he lifted his gaze back to hers, it was to flash a look of warning.

  Which didn’t work.

  “What’s your real name?” she asked.

  “Huh?” The question caught him off guard, seemed out of the blue.

  “I’m pretty sure your mom didn’t hold you in her arms when you were born and say, ‘I think we’ll call him Duke.’ So what’s your real name?”

  He hesitated. He didn’t particularly want to tell her; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d told anyone. There was nothing wrong with his name—he just . . . didn’t feel like that person anymore.

  When he didn’t reply, she said, “Well then, where did the name Duke come from?”

  This one was easier to answer. “When I was in high school, I got into it with a teacher who said I acted entitled. I didn’t even know what that meant—and mostly, I was just being a troublemaker. Anyway, the guy started calling me ‘the duke’—and I guess it stuck.”

  “Makes sense,” she said easily. “But you still haven’t told me your name.”

  Shit, why was it so hard for him to say? Maybe because it had been a long time since he’d been that kid. That kid who’d had normal hopes and dreams and . . . a more tender heart. That kid who’d felt loved.

  But finally he whispered, “David. My name is David.”

  He met her eyes once more, long enough to see the light in them. “David,” she repeated. “I like it.”

  He said nothing—he didn’t know what to say. And he wasn’t sure what had happened to the little boy once named David Dawson.

  “So when I wake up in the morning, David,” she whispered, “am I going to be alone?”

  “Do you want to be?”

  She drew her chin down slightly, appearing at once vulnerable and confident. “Not really. But I wouldn’t try to make you stay if you’d rather go. What would be the point?”

  He nodded, thought about it, and said, “You won’t be alone, Daisy.”

  And if he wasn’t mistaken, a look of contentment came over her just before she said, “Goodnight, David.” Then she closed her eyes.

  And Duke lay there watching her like that, realizing with a soft, muted sort of amazement that she hadn’t thought he was horrible, and that somehow, despite his protests, her simple understanding had made him feel a little less awful. And that was the last thing he’d expected.

  “One more thing,” she said, eyes still shut.

  “What’s that, Daisy?”

  “You were wrong when you said no one would miss you if you were gone. Lucky would miss you. And I would miss you, too. A lot.”

  Duke felt a little weird sitting at Anna’s kitchen table the following morning as she served up pancakes, scooping them from the griddle onto his plate with a wide metal spatula. “I’m good at pancakes,” she told him happily. “So at least that’s the beginning of a breakfast menu for the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Thanks for making them,” he told her after a short hesitation.

  She met his gaze. “It’s nice to have a reason to. Cooking for two seems a lot more worthwhile than cooking for one.”

  “I used to cook for myself,” he told her, not necessarily agreeing with her thinking. “In my apartment above the bar.”

  After putting a couple pancakes on her own plate, she cast a grin. “Oh yeah? What did you cook?”

  He shrugged. “I make a mean burger. And in winter I can cook up a pretty good pot of chili. Nothing fancy—just stuff like that.”

  She nodded, now lowering the empty griddle back to the stove before joining him at the table. “Maybe we can grill hamburgers some night. I bought a gas grill on sale last fall—you’ve probably noticed it in the garage.”

  “Sure,” he said, giving a quick nod of his own. He wasn’t sure he wanted to promise—or get too cozy playing house here—but the idea didn’t sound bad to him. Then, almost thinking aloud, he said, “Actually, guess I still do cook for myself. Out in the woods.”

  She stopped in the midst of pouring syrup on her pancakes, eyes widening on him. “Oh?”

  “Fish,” he said, answering her unasked question. “I catch fish from the lake and fry them in an old pan I found, over an open fire. Bass and bluegill mostly.”

  “I like fish,” she said with just a trace of a smile, clearly hinting.

  And thinking her cute as hell, he supposed he didn’t mind saying, “Maybe I’ll make you some sometime.”

  “So I was thinking,” she began—and he cut her off by saying, “Uh-oh. That’s scary, Daisy.”

  But his sarcasm didn’t daunt her. “I was thinking maybe we could go see Lucky together. Let him know you’re here. I know he’d want to know. He misses you.”

  He and Lucky weren’t the kind of guys who ever talked much about missing each other, but the truth was—seeing Lucky sounded . . . good. Well, sort of. Part of him wanted to just keep on doing what he’d been doing—keeping to himself, working on Anna’s house. He’d gotten used to living a solitary life. And somehow . . . the more people he dealt with, the more he would be forced to deal with what had happened to Denny. He still wasn’t quite sure how to function normally again, and staying in the woods sounded easier.

  And then there was the part about Anna.

  “You mean, like, letting him know you and I have been . . .” He raised his eyebrows at her across the table, skeptical.

  “Well, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but . . . yeah, now that you mention it. I mean, I don’t see any reason to keep it from him.”

  “But . . . you’re his sister.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Well, I’m not sure . . . He might not want me to—” He stopped, sighed. “And besides, either way, I don’t know if it’s a good idea in general. I mean, there’s a reason I’ve been living where I’m living. Because I like being alone right now, ya know?”

  “But you’ve also started spending time with me. So maybe you don’t like being alone as much as you think.” Now she was looking all sassy again, in a slightly superior way. And he probably wouldn’t have liked it on another woman, but on her, he did.

  Even so, though . . . “No matter how you slice it, Daisy, not sure he’d like finding out I’m gettin’ it on with his little sister, or that he’d . . . get where I’m at right now. So, uh, maybe this isn’t a very good idea.”

  “Duke, Lucky loves you,” she said.

  And hell—despite himself, the words struck him hard. Because that was one more thing he and Lucky didn’t sit around saying to each other—most guys didn’t—so maybe he’d never really thought of it exactly that way in his head. Or maybe he’d forgotten anyone loved him. But maybe she was right. Maybe what he had with Lucky was strong enough, sturdy enough, that he would understand what had driven Duke away, and that he’d be okay with Duke seeing his sister. Maybe.

  So that’s what he told her, keeping it plain and simple. “Maybe.”

  “No, Lucky definitely loves you, trust me on this.”

  He just rolled his eyes. “No, Daisy—I meant maybe we’ll go see him. But just maybe. So don’t go calling him up on the phone and setting a dinner date, okay?”

  She smiled. “Okay.” Yet she clearly knew she’d won.

  And Duke wasn’t in the habit of letting women make decisions for him or coerce him into anything he didn’t want to do. But with Anna . . . damn, maybe sometimes she knew what he wanted better than he did. Or maybe he needed to be pushed and she knew just the right ways.

  Yet after he stood up and carried his plate to the sink a few minutes later, then walked to the bathroom down the hall, he glanced in the mirror and saw . . . his scar. The jagged line that cut its way down his face now. And he realized that for a little while anyway, he’d forgotten about it. With her. Even if usually, when he was with her, the knowledge of it was always floating there in the back of his mind. Or the front of it. But she’d made him forget about it last night�
��until they’d started talking about the accident—and he’d actually forgotten about it again this morning, until just now.

  Damn, how had that happened?

  And for the first time, he began to wonder if it was actually maybe even possible for her to forget about it, too.

  “Gradually, I gave him such confidence that he ventured to take me walking . . .”

  Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

  Twelve

  In the week that followed, they had sex twice more, both times amazing. Sometimes they talked after, other times they stayed quieter—but they didn’t speak further of the accident that had Duke living in the woods. It wasn’t that Anna didn’t want to know more, and maybe find some way to help him deal with it—she did, and in fact, she had attempted to bring it up again, but he’d quieted her by flashing a look of annoyance and then saying, “Maybe this will shut you up, Daisy,” just before he kissed her. And if he insisted on shutting her up, she at least liked the method he chose.

  The truth was, the things he’d told her about the accident scared her a little. Sure, she’d known she was dealing with a very troubled man in Duke, but . . . somehow finding out why, with all the details, made it more real. Duke had seen and experienced horrible things, and he was holding himself responsible for them. She wasn’t sure how a person dealt with that—or if Duke ever would. And though she knew she would be there for him in any way he needed her to be, she also kept reminding herself that this was a good reason not to get too serious about him, or too attached. She had enough troubles of her own without trying to take on those of someone with even more wounds inside that hadn’t yet begun to heal—and again, who knew if they ever would?

  They also continued to work on the house, and the progress being made began to excite Anna. For so long now, since last summer, the idea of her bed-and-breakfast had been just that, an idea. But with Duke’s hard work speeding things along, she could envision opening by autumn.

  On the nights that found them in Anna’s bed, Duke stayed over. But on other nights he still made his way back to the old shack. An idea that bothered Anna now, but she sensed that he still liked the solitude he found there—so she didn’t argue when he went tromping off toward the forest, even as absurd as it seemed to her that he continued living in dilapidated surroundings, fishing for his dinner, and washing up in water from the stream.

  And though sometimes they exchanged easy conversation, often they would spend hours working on the house side by side, barely exchanging a word. Duke’s choice. She always tried to make conversation, but if all she got back was the occasional “Yeah,” “No,” and “Uh-huh,” she understood that he just wasn’t in the mood to chitchat. And she’d decided that was okay.

  Because while she continued to develop feelings for him and thought of him as more than a casual lover, she wasn’t sure he felt the same. And she wasn’t inclined to press the subject. And again, maybe that was best—maybe it was wise to keep this a casual liaison like he’d told her from the start. And the one thing she knew for sure was that Duke Dawson wasn’t suddenly her boyfriend—because boyfriends didn’t go off and sleep in the woods when you had a perfectly nice house to offer them.

  All in all, she wasn’t sure what their relationship was or what she wanted it to be. But for now, she was just trying to be cool about it, take it day by day, enjoy it for what it was, and not let her feelings for her outlaw biker get out of control.

  Even if she thought of him almost constantly. Even if she’d been so open and honest with him in a way you couldn’t take back.

  And she’d also been so bold as to take the initiative to help him move forward, at least a little, doing something he’d expressly told her not to. She’d broken the news to him yesterday while they’d been standing side by side, painting porch rails with a coat of primer—as he lectured her on needing to pick her color scheme so he could start on the biggest part of the rehab, the clapboard siding she’d decided to use.

  “Relax,” she’d told him. “I promise I’ll make a decision over the next couple of days.”

  “So you keep saying,” he groused, swishing a small paintbrush up and down one of the new spindles he’d outfitted the whole porch with. Then he narrowed his critical gaze on her work. “Slightly thicker coat, Daisy. Don’t skimp so much.”

  “So . . .” she began, seeing an opening, “I ran into Tessa at Home Depot when I was picking up the primer yesterday.”

  He answered offhandedly, having refocused on his own work. “Yeah? She doing good?”

  Anna nodded. “She was getting some paint chips. Now that she’s doing interiors full time, her business is booming even more.”

  “Good.”

  “And when she asked how work on the house was going, I . . . admitted to her that I have a helper. And that it’s you.”

  Duke stopped painting and just gave her a look.

  “Don’t be mad,” she said quickly.

  “Don’t you think I should have been in on that decision?”

  She blinked, a bit nervously, half agreeing with him but half not. “Maybe, but I’m not sure you ever would have made it. And Tessa was thrilled to hear you’re back in the area. She said Lucky misses you like crazy.”

  He lowered his chin dubiously. “He told her that, did he?”

  “Of course not. She said ever since you left he sits around and sulks, and she knows that’s why.” And when he didn’t respond to that, she decided she should go on. “So Tessa suggested you come over one night. With me, too, if that’s okay.”

  He looked disgruntled. “So did you tell her what we’ve been up to? Besides fixing up the house, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “No. That I kept to myself.”

  “Funny how when it’s your business, Daisy,” he groused, “you don’t go telling people so fast.”

  “Are you mad?” But she rushed ahead before he could answer. “Because you shouldn’t be. Because, again, he’s going to be thrilled to see you. And I explained that you’d been . . . keeping to yourself, and she said she wouldn’t tell Lucky yet. She thought it would be nice to surprise him. Thursday night. She wants us to come over and grill out with them.”

  Anna waited for an answer and didn’t get one—so she finally went back to painting, deciding that apparently this was a bad idea and that Duke just wasn’t ready for it yet.

  Until, a few minutes later, he stopped priming to refill the paint tray they both shared, and as he poured the white primer, he said quietly, “I guess I can go to Lucky and Tessa’s place with you on Thursday.” He didn’t look up as he spoke.

  Even so, Anna glanced away slightly to hide her smile, lest he think she was making too much of it. She only said, “Good. I’ll let her know.”

  And her heart fairly sang with the knowledge that she was bringing Duke and her brother back together this way, at the time when Duke surely needed a friend more than ever.

  But then, just like every time she felt that happy little zing over anything concerning Duke, she reminded herself: Don’t get attached. Don’t get serious. You two are so different. And God knows the man has some problems. And besides, he’s not the settling down type. And you’re not, either—or at least you haven’t been so far. So stop feeling the zing!

  But as usual, the zing kept coming—especially when she finally let herself peek over and watch as Duke began to paint again. Because he peeked over at her at the same time. And their eyes met—just for a brief moment before they both darted their gazes away like a pair of shy teenagers.

  And she couldn’t deny that, boyfriend or not, she cared more for Duke Dawson each and every day.

  Of course, in addition to working with Duke on the house, Anna was still getting comfortable in her job at the bookstore. At first, dealing with the customers had held some challenges, emotionally. People couldn’t help themselves from noting that Anna Romo was actually out and about in the community again.

  “I haven’t seen you since last summer when you first
came home,” Rose Marie Keckley had said. “Where on earth have you been hiding yourself?”

  Lettie Hart had told her, “I thought maybe you moved back to . . . wherever it was you were for all that time. But it’s nice that you didn’t.”

  And indeed, all their comments were kind ones, albeit still fraught with some of the curiosity people had indulged in last year—but she found that the more she was out in the community, the less of an oddity she became.

  Today was her first day working in Under the Covers on her own—Amy was taking her beloved cat Mr. Knightley to the vet for a flea treatment and some shots and, expecting it to be traumatic, had informed Anna that she’d probably be by herself all day.

  “Seriously?” Anna had asked, a bit taken aback. Not by the idea of manning the bookstore alone, but that a cat’s vet visit required such drama.

  “Maybe even longer,” Amy had informed her. “In fact, it’s very possible you won’t see me for several days. That’s why I scheduled you with so many hours the rest of the week. Mr. Knightley takes these things very badly. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Anna had shaken her head. She’d noticed the excessive hours, but . . . well, she knew Duke didn’t mind the alone time working on the house, so he’d just have more of it the next few days.

  Fortunately, the work at the bookshop was easy, and people in Destiny were nice, and she was learning to appreciate the fact that they cared about her. And it was a beautiful June day—temperatures topping out in the high seventies—so she propped open the front door, using as a doorstop a small, portable, wooden bookshelf on wheels that Amy often used to display sale books outside. She’d been instructed to call Tessa if she had any questions. And though she still thought it beyond extreme that Amy would be totally incommunicado based on a visit to the vet for her cat, she decided it only meant that Amy was perhaps a little more eccentric than Anna had yet realized.

  The day passed easily, with quite a bit of store traffic. But things had slowed when, only a few minutes before closing time, a pretty young blonde walked in. Anna greeted her with a smile and a hello. “Anything I can help you find? Or just browsing?”